Thursday, October 31, 2024

My Review of All Hallows Eve (2013)

 


Written And Directed by Damien Leone 

Timmy: "See it's just a scary movie. Let's watch it."

For those who wanted to see what Art the Clown (Mike Gianelli) was like before his solo adventures, this anthology movie somewhat predates his first movie. Needless to say, he wasn't nice back them.

As a framing story, you've got responsible babysitter Sarah (Katie Maguire) looking after kids, Tia (Sydney Freihofer) and Timmy (Cole Mathewson). They're done with trick and treating and Timmy happened to be given a VHS of a movie that Sarah's got reservations about them watching. As she should.

Of course the video gets watched and there's a slew of violent encounters, all of which have Art the Clown as the common denominator. The less interesting of the bunch was one involving an alien encounter with a woman named Caroline (Catherine Callahan) but it's also the most different of the bunch.

The rest of them are very typical to things we've seen within the Terrifier movies themselves. The first one being focused on a woman named Casey (Kayla Lian). She's kidnapped by Art with a bunch of other women and sacrificed as part of a Satanic ritual, involving witches as well. It's an unsettling first tale and the strongest of the bunch.

The last story on the other hand would be the one that would justify the critical belief of there being a misogynistic undertone to this franchise. An unfortunate costume designer (Marie Maser) tried to escape from Art in the middle of nowhere. It ended horrifically for her but what Art does to the woman's body was just too much in my opinion. Stuff like that even I think Leone is better with scaling back.

Overall, while the three stories are a mixed bag, the fascinating part would be that Art coming into the real world and killing both Tia and Timmy with Sarah left to face the consequences. It's a very brutal ending to an anthology movie that wasn't holding back to begin with.

- The three stories are called The 9th Circle, Something In The Dark and Terrifier.
- Katie Maguire who played Sarah would also appear in Terrifier (2016) as bitchy talking show host Monica Brown.
- There's an unrelated sequel out there too that I might watch next year.
- Chronology: It's set during Halloween.

All Hallows Eve really does set up everything about Art the Clown and the hyper violent world of his. I mostly enjoyed it to be honest, minus a weak middle story and aspects of the last one too.

Rating: 6 out of 10 

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